About

RickB- Human, Artist, Fool.

Ynys Mon, UK.

The blog is called ten percent because of what Kurt Vonnegut wrote when remembering Susan Sontag - She was asked what she had learned from the Holocaust, and she said that 10 percent of any population is cruel, no matter what, and that 10 percent is merciful, no matter what, and that the remaining 80 percent could be moved in either direction.-

And I'm writing it because I need the therapy and I lust for world domination.

Pages

Meta

Perversely the strange cult (Cheerleaders, Fighting Cocks, whatever) around Tory Islamophobe Dominic Wightman and Charlie Flowers/Ludas Matyi (and by association Patrick ‘once sacked for racism‘ Mercer MP) claim to fight extremism yet they applaud intimidation and threats of violence against blogger Tim Ireland which are strongly reminiscent of the common or garden fascist. What is even more puzzling is they appear to also be a ‘band’ who rather than rebellion and anti establishment passion proudly associate themselves with state security services in the name of fighting ‘radical Islam’, how very Rock & Roll. It’s as if Nine Inch Nails teamed up with the CIA and released an album about how great it is to bomb Iraq… (except NIN are talented, can play and more than 3 people have heard of them). The whole thing seems so cack handed it’s enough to make you wonder if our spooks are part funding this astroturf oddment, it’s Terry & June dressed as punks in its cultural illiteracy.

So if the only answer to journalistic enquiry is to challenge someone to a fight we can deduce they have no arguments. I suppose it could be worse, they could be threatening to play their albums at bloggers. To those people in the ‘band’ who may not be fully aware of the odd activities of the ringleaders, I would find some musical differences quick and move on to more talented pastures.

Via Iran Affairs, the Columbia Journalism Review (and look they make a mistake, they type Iraq when they mean Iran, in the current NYT version it is Iran -no google cache- so did CJR mistype of did the NYT?)-

On Saturday, The New York Times offered on its front page a long, behind-the-scenes reconstruction of what it called “three dramatic days of highly sensitive diplomacy and political maneuvering” that the Obama administration had conducted after it learned of the letter that Iran had sent to the International Atomic Energy Agency describing the new nuclear plant. The story, we were informed, was “based on interviews with administration officials and American allies, all of whom want the story known to help support their case against Iraq.” No allies were cited, however. Instead, the article relied entirely on anonymous US officials. Here’s my attribution tally:

a senior administration official
a second senior administration official
administration officials
senior intelligence officials
the officials
the official
White House officials
American officials
a senior administration official
the officials
a senior official
American officials
the officials
a senior administration official
the administration official
a senior administration official
administration officials
one administration official
senior administration official

I wondered how many officials this actually added up to. Were the senior administration officials, the White House officials, and the American officials different individuals or different ways of referring to the same people?

Posted in Media. Tags: Iran, Media, Q2N. Comments Off on Q2N- What The Establishment Learned From Iraq: They Can Get Away With It

One person I would not vote for is the crusading neo-Conservative Rory Stewart. It is particularly annoying that he is constantly referred to as a former diplomat. Stewart was an MI6 officer and not a member of the FCO.

Three years ago I received a message from the FCO asking me not to mention this as, at that time, Stewart was still very active for MI6 in Afghanistan and his life could have been endangered. I agreed, and even removed a reference from my blog. However now that he is safely and lucratively ensconsed at Harvard, I see no reason to conceal the truth. I is necessary to reveal this so that people can correctly evaluate his political pronouncements on Iraq and Afghanistan, and his motives in making them.

Polanski has made some great films (Repulsion is a corker), rape is a crime and should be punished, the reasons for his apprehension are murky, possibly a corporate studio got annoyed at some deal with him that went bad and reached out to the DA, but he should pay for his crime whether that is community service, reparations, incarceration & therapy, that’s for a jury.

This is censorship, artworks in a gallery context are not identical to pornography, the Met clearly lack the theoretical grounding to understand this, the Tate is cowardly, galleries are formal spaces where discourse must be free in order to be of any cultural use.

The UN’s chief weapons inspector, Mohamed ElBaradei, said today he had seen “no credible evidence” that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, rejecting British intelligence allegations that a weapons programme has been going on for at least four years.

The Guardian too spread propaganda and the media frenzy is ludicrous, but the war pimps objective is not so funny.

Trusted sources have reported to Amnesty international that male activist Kyaw Zaw Lwin was tortured and suffered other ill-treatment whilst in detention in Insein Prison, Yangon, Myanmar’s main city. He was arrested in Yangon on 3 September. He has been denied medical treatment for the injuries he sustained from the torture he endured during interrogation. There are grave concerns about his health.

This as the US meets the Burmese health minister and changes its policy on Burma. As I have said before the prospect of intelligent sanctions and negotiations could be good but… in reality is it really about countering China’s influence & non -US- aligned spread of nuclear technology in a geopolitical context as the US squares up to the new power in town (a power that owns a shit load of US debt, hmmm) and human rights & social justice will be forgotten. This is not the most auspicious start. I think we are getting used to the Obama administration’s style sheet, good presentation masking business as usual.